Clare County Library | Songs of Clare |
Clare County Library | Songs of Clare |
Miss Fanny Parnell![]() Cahermurphy, Kilmihil Recorded in Conway’s Bar, Mullagh, September 1973 ![]() |
||
A flower that was cherished has fled
from our bosom, Oh father, have mercy on this stainless daughter, No more through the green scented valleys she’ll
wander, |
||
“Fanny Parnell (1848 –1882), sister of Charles Stewart Parnell, was an Irish poet and nationalist. She was known as the Patriot Poet, most of her poetry being about Irish nationalism. She began publishing in Dublin in 1864 under the pseudonym Aleria in ‘The Irish People’, the newspaper of the Fenian Brotherhood. Most of her work was published in ‘The Boston Pilot’ which was the best known Irish newspaper in America during the nineteenth century. Two of her most widely published works were ‘The Hovels of Ireland’, a pamphlet, and a collection of poems, ‘Land League Songs’. Her best known poem is ‘Hold the Harvest’, which Michael Davitt referred to as the ‘Marseillaise of the Irish peasant’. ‘Hovels of Ireland’, published in 1880, was a twenty seven page pamphlet attacking the injustices suffered by Irish people, in which she expressed her disgust for the land-owning class, which, ironically, was the class to which she belonged. Here Fanny uses the following quote to explain that, even though her family owned land, they were Irish nationalists: ‘That moral energy which inspires men with the ability and the desire to oppose themselves to injustice, to protest against the abuse of power, even when this injustice and this abuse do not directly affect them, is the virtue which is the guaranty of order, security and independence’. It was widely published in newspapers and journals and sold for 25 cents each, the money sent home to the Famine Fund. She died of a heart attack in 1882. Hold the Harvest The serpent's curse upon you lies – you writhe
within the dust Oh by the God who made us all, the master and the serf But God is on the peasant's side, the God that loves
the poor, |
||
<< Songs of Clare |